Shine
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: AU for Abandon All Hope.  Before there were Angels, there were Stars and it was on one of these that Dean Winchester, aged five, made a wish.
1. Before the Angels, there were Stars

**AN:** If you're not listening to Florence and the Machine's 'Cosmic Love', you should be. This is an AU ending for 5x10, Abandon All Hope. Also, I'm totally ripping off _Stardust_.

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><p><strong>Before there were Angels, there were Stars…<strong>

…A stretcher. They were talking about making a stretcher. It was laughable, really. She wasn't going anywhere, not like this.

"Stop," she said, voice weak, but instantly grabbing their attention. "Guys, stop."

They froze, watching her with dreading eyes. Her mother looked between them and her, half-broken already.

"Can we –" she broke off, letting out a soft pained sound. It was hard not to. "Can we be realistic about this, please?"

The boys approached, and she attempted to draw herself up, but only succeeded in letting out another soft grunt as her displaced insides twisted. Something was really, really wrong in there…

"I can't move my legs. I can't be moved. My guts are being held in by an ace bandage. We gotta – we gotta get our priorities straight here."

Mom shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving her face, soundlessly mouthing _no_, as Sam and Dean exchanged desperate looks. She hated it, she hated that she was hurting them, she hated that this had happened at all…this was not what she had wanted when she got here, never what she wanted, what was _intended_…

"Number one," she gasped, "I'm not going anywhere."

Ellen's voice shook. Tears, rage, helplessness. "Joanna Beth, you stop talking like that."

"Mom." She looked up at her, at this woman who was her whole world. "I can't fight. I can't walk. But I can do something."

"Jo, _no_." Ellen gripped her hand, knuckles white, but Jo couldn't feel the pinch of her grip through the pain burning a hole in her side. She could feel the warmth of her mother's skin though, and it was heart-breaking. "No, honey, you can't; you don't – we don't know what that could do…"

"Mom, I have to try," she breathed back. "You know I have to try, and this could be our one chance." She braced herself. Her heart was breaking already, but this would break her mother's. "I need you to go," she said. "I need you to get the gear and go with Sam, find someplace safer to hide."

"Jo –"

"Please." She tried to smile reassuringly. "Please, Mom."

Ellen shook her head, confusion and pain clear on her face. "But I – I thought you needed..."

Jo just looked steadily back at her, her smile real now. "I found it."

Ellen stilled, confusion clearing. She turned, looked up at a thoroughly puzzled Dean Winchester. "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, God."

"What's going on?" Dean asked. He looked unnerved. "Guys? What's all this about? Jo, what're you planning?"

Jo smiled at him. "It's going to be okay," she told him, voice sounding small and weak even to her own ears. Sincere though, and that was important. It was time to believe, now. No more pretending. "Mom…"

Ellen was crying. Two streams of tears trailed unacknowledged down her face as she leaned forward and kissed Jo's forehead. Jo felt the moisture on her face, mingling with the cold sweat and blood and her own tears.

"I love you," Ellen told her, dark eyes fierce and implacable. "But so help me you had better come back because I –" Jo saw her throat work as she swallowed a sob. "I can still ground you, young lady."

Jo managed a laugh, despite the torn muscles in her stomach, and reverently touched her mother's face. Ellen gave her a brief smile back and climbed to her feet. "Sam. Come with me, please."

"Why?" Sam asked, frowning at both women, and at the same time Dean said, "whoa, hey."

"Ellen," he continued, "what the hell is going on?"

"I need your help," Jo said, meeting his gaze when his eyes fixed on her. She's always been a sucker for a pretty pair of eyes. It was no wonder, really. "Dean, there's something that I can do, something only I can do, and only you can help me to do it. Mom and Sam need to go somewhere safe until it's done."

He approached her slowly, taking those few, crucial steps, and settled carefully beside her. She leant her head back against the counter and gazed at him.

"What are you going to do, Jo?" he asked, his focus on her absolute and fierce. There was something in his voice, under the low, baritone-calm of it. He was afraid, she realized, not for himself, but for her.

She smiled, softly, radiantly, and saw him draw a breath of surprise.

"In July of 1984," she told him, "you sat in the back seat of your daddy's car and made a wish on a star." She felt the tears on her face as that precious memory swam through her mind, shivering and half-lit, like ripples moving upon water reflecting a night sky. "You were so small, and so sad. There were lights in your eyes, and on the glass of the windows."

Dean was staring at her, looking shaken and terrified and like he was swallowing around his heart. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. "Fireworks," he rasped. "It was the fourth, and we were driving to Pastor Jim's. People were letting off fireworks and I could see them from the road. Jo…"

"What did you wish for, Dean?" she interrupted gently.

He swallowed hard, jaw working. His eyes were shining. She's seen that look before.

"For a safe place," he said. "I wished for a safe place. Jo, how – how do you know this? How could you –?"

She just smiled sadly and reached up one blood-stained hand to touch his face. He drew an unsteady, rattling breath as she did, but didn't move away or stop her. She ran her thumb over his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, and drew him to her, putting her cheek against his so that her face was hidden from Sam and her mother. Her whisper was only for him.

"I was the star."

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><p><strong>AN2:<strong> Told you so.


	2. Taught to See into Human Hearts

**AN:** Wow, guys! Hi! Feels kinda good to be back on the SPN fic-wagon. Also, this one's for Mercutio, who's been kicking my arse to write lately. Also, apparently her mind exploded when she read chapter one, so I kinda owe her a new brain. Heart you, Mercu!

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><p><strong>Before there were Angels, there were Stars, and it was the Stars that He first taught to see into the hearts of Humans…<strong>

Dean seemed to have stopped breathing for a second and drew back, staring at her. She gazed calmly back and him and saw something come to life upon his face.

"Sam," he said, addressing his brother but never taking those delightful eyes from her. "Sam, you need to go with Ellen."

"Dean!" Sam was incredulous.

Dean turned, tearing his gaze from her and locking eyes with his brother.

"Sammy. Please. Trust me on this."

Jo saw Sam's jaw tighten, his eyes framed by a frown, but he nodded and let Ellen lead him to the back store room. She heard the windows being pried from their frames and the low thuds as Sam and her mother climbed through and made their way across the rooftops.

Only when they were out of earshot, did Dean turn back to her.

"You were my wish?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Then why…why didn't you come true?"

Jo took a shaking breath. Her eyes stung and she was helpless in the face of that failure. She fought not to cry, but it was so, so hard…

"I tried," she breathed through the tears. "Dean, Dean, Dean, I tried so hard, but I got lost. You stopped believing, you stopped _hoping_ and I was falling so fast… I looked and looked, but I couldn't find you and then it was too late; I was down and I had to be someone's wish. I became Ellen's, but I…"

"You fought so hard to get out," he said, wonderingly. "It wasn't just because of your dad, was it? You were…you were looking for me."

She nodded, gasping through her tears. "I was always your wish. If things had been different, if I had realized who you were in time… I still would have been."

He looked so shaken, but a smile bloomed on his mouth, a double curl of warmth that made her catch her breath, and he murmured, "Still are."

And then she was laughing, laughing and crying and unable to keep from touching his face. He pressed that smile against the palm of her hand before asking, "What do I need to do, Jo?"

She gathered herself, drawing a breath as deep as her seizing lungs would allow. She could feel it now; a warm swell inside her, like a rising tide sweeping back and forth, back and forth in time with her breathing. _In time with the beat of his heart._

"The doors," she told him. "We need – you need to open them."

Dean's eyebrows shot up his forehead. "Wait, the hounds…we're going to let them in?"

"Yeah."

"God, I hope you know what you're doing."

She gave him a wobbly smile. "Me too."

He grunted as he got to his feet, kissing her forehead and muttering against her hair, "Real reassuring, Joey."

She watched through blurring eyes as he slowly unbolted the doors and swung them open, kicking through the salt-lines and backing warily away.

A low growl rent the still air, gurgling and obscene.

Jo flinched, breathing ragged, and that heating tide inside her trembled. Dean froze for half a second and then continued to back towards her. His back hit the counter and he slid down it until he was sitting next to her. She reached blindly for him, eyes failing. He put both arms around her, carefully gathered her close. In a brief moment of self-indulgence, she put her head on his shoulder, fighting back the pain, unconsciousness, fear…

They heard the rattle of claws upon the linoleum floor. The whispers of clothing disturbed by grunting animal bodies. The scent of blood and carrion and wet fur filled the store.

Dean clasped her tighter, their faces close enough to share breath.

"Jo, tell me what to do," he whispered. She could hear the fear in his voice, but…but she was so calm, so warm. She was home…

"Kiss me," she told him, serene.

This close, even her darkening eyes could make out his surprise, but he angled his face, fitted his mouth scant millimetres over hers.

"What are you going to do?" he breathed against her lips.

She smiled so he could feel it. "What stars do best," she breathed back. "_Shine_."

Then her eyes slid closed, and he kissed her and…

And then there was light.

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><p><strong>AN2:<strong> Biggidy-BAM! Reviews are made of love and sunshine! Which considering the rain here, I could really do with.


	3. And Bring the World to Its Knees

**AN: **Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It warms the cockles of my ever-so-slightly-crusty heart. So here, have a chapter!

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><p><strong>Before there were Angels, there were Stars, and there are none in Heaven nor on Earth who can outshine them…<strong>

Then there was light, light, light roaring out from their epicentre, brilliant and unstoppable and carrying the sound of a girl's wild laughter with it.

It roiled fiercely, out and out from them in a tsunami of tangible white, penetrating earth and walls and flesh as it went.

It found Ellen and Sam crouched in an abandoned attic and hurricaned around them, sinking through their skin and eyes and tousling their hair with fierce white fingers. Above the roar of wind they heard the familiar voice that it carried, and Ellen sobbed and laughed and let Sam wrap one long arm around her, as though to keep her from being blown away.

Sam clung to Ellen as the light dug into him, burrowing and hunting down the parts of him made of shadow. The wind thundered and cried and laughed as Sam came apart at the seams, both he and Ellen sinking to their knees to weather the most spectacular of storms.

The light pounded and rolled on, its ripples finding the demon calling itself Meg. With an outraged shriek, light bound her tight and ripped her from her stolen flesh, flinging her away as though she were no more than a handful of burnt paper. Her scream of rage and pain was lost in the laughing wind. Light filled the girl she had left behind, and when she dropped to the floorboards of the abandoned boarding house she was whole and hale and breathing.

The light whirled and dervished, snuffing out the fire trapping Castiel like a ring of birthday candles. The angel, unable to keep from smiling, closed his eyes and swayed in place, letting the light beat and pulse over and around and through him in glorious waves…

**Before there were Angels, there were Stars, and there is nothing and no one to rival their purity …**

At the lip of the pit, Lucifer stood frozen and disbelieving. Light roiled and rioted across the grass towards him and his demons, hurling them away, dust in the wind, inconsequential. It eddied and unspooled and _shoved_ at him, unrelenting in its glory. He thrashed against it, snarling in a fit of temper, but there was nothing to be done, and he leapt away from there, away from the sweetness and joy and delirious screaming of the resurrected sacrifices that climbed from the pit to be embraced by their newly liberated menfolk.

Far away, the roared at the stars overhead, thwarted and outraged.

But the stars remained distant and serene and though he didn't know it, they smiled.

**Before there were Angels, there were Stars, and the love of a Star will bring a world to its knees…**

Dean dared not open his eyes because Jo, _oh Jo_, she was a creature of incandescence and airy sweetness in his arms.

There could be nothing greater than this. There could be nothing better.

He could feel her mouth against his, lips and teeth and tongue, and the flutter of her lashes against his hand where he cradled her face. He could feel the building heat of her body in his arms, could feel her shifting as she put her arms around his shoulders and settled to straddle his lap. He could feel her strength, the steady roar of her blood that matched the pulse of the light against his eyelids.

_That matched the beat of his heart._

He heard the wild laughter, heard the anguished howls of the hounds as they were destroyed by Jo's shining, and grinned against her mouth as he kissed her.

Nothing better than this.

All too soon it was over, the light spilling down to a trickle, a shower of lazy over-large sparks on the settling breeze. They sat curled close together, mouths still touching, breathing each other's air.

Jo smiled, shy, soft, and completely content. Dean smiled back and couldn't find any pain there. He tightened his left arm around her, his right finding her side, fingers ghosting under her shirt to touch her stomach, spanning the side that had been torn open, only…

"You're…"

"Whole," she breathed. Her eyes were the spaces between stars and her hair was glowing faintly in the darkened room. Her skin was smooth and bright and she smelt of new snow still falling in clear air. He could feel the butterfly-beat of her pulse under his hands and knew it matched his exactly.

"Whole," he whispered back, just before his lips sealed back over hers.

END

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><p><strong>AN2:<strong> Good times?


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